Ebony
by Angel Leviathan
Summary: That first night that isn't a night, she sleeps heavily.


**Title:** Ebony

 **Author:** Angel Leviathan

 **Summary:** That first night that isn't a night, she sleeps heavily.

 **Notes:** Follows 'The Husbands of River Song'.

* * *

That first night that isn't a night, she sleeps heavily.

She has more than one good reason to, and for not wanting to leave her – their – bed besides, but River has never let herself sleep in the TARDIS for so long, or to fall back to sleep so many times as she does now. Sometimes, when she wakes, she realises that she's curled in against the Doctor and he's cradling her in the crook of one arm. Other times, he's not there and she's alone beneath the sheets, yet it doesn't alarm her. She knows how he is.

Usually, she's up and on her feet by now, if only to prove that she can be. The part of her that has normally begun to scream that sleeping is just wasting time, and who knows how much time she has here, with him (or at all) is but a whisper at the back of her mind, easily dismissed in the warmth and security of _twenty-four years_.

In a day or so, she'll start thinking clearly again. When the euphoria fades and she can no longer suppress the questions and doubts about what either of them can truly manage by way of being something approximating a proper couple, spending proper _time_ together, then maybe she'll lie awake instead. She thinks she should be more concerned than she is, and perhaps if it had been any of his past selves to make this proposal and give her this time, she might be wondering at the _why_ a little more, but _this_ one...

It isn't solely about her. What he's doing isn't a selfless act to attempt to compensate for past wrongs. There's something different about him now, a certainty that makes her a little bit afraid to ask all that's happened since she last saw him. What he knows and cannot tell her (and the rest that he _will not_ tell her) has brought him here and to this decision. His past and her future. She'll learn fragments of the past, she's sure, but that sort of knowledge is something so rarely shared between them in its true form; what she'll get is the version he believes he remembers, coloured by what he's seen since.

This one wants her. This one was so pleased to see her that she could not permit the thought that it might be him to cross her mind. She accepted from his last self all that she believed he was capable of giving, yet she could never quite shake the thought that he was simply playing at what he thought was expected from and wanted of him. A cruel thought, she knows, but theirs has always been a relationship tainted by such cruelty, unintentionally inflicted on each other or by time itself. Nothing has ever been easy, and it is enough to make her blind to all but the ugly, awful moments when anyone tries to do anything so crass as to paint their story as a grand, fairytale romance.

Unintentionally useful when someone whips out a lie detector. It could be amusing, were it not so painfully second nature.

She lets her body have the rest that it demands, usually only achieved when things go so badly for her that sedation and healing are involved. She feels the tiniest kick of adrenaline every time that she wakes for those few seconds, and she can't quite tell whether it's fight or flight, surprise or simple joy before the TARDIS soothes at the edge of her senses and lulls her back to sleep. This is home now, she tells her. She doesn't have to run or go back to a prison cell, or worry about anything for the moment. She has to accept that the TARDIS knows and understands more than she does about things that haven't even happened yet, and so, in this, she trusts her.

When next she wakes, she finds him in the doorway, half-dressed, which, for him, means almost fully-clothed, just looking dishevelled and minus his belt, his shirt open.

"Do I gloat now about prowess and wearing you out? Because I'd hate to miss an opportunity."

She stretches languidly and ducks a smile into the covers. "You could, but I don't think it would be terribly becoming."

"Just as well you don't worry too often about that sort of thing. Are you ever going to get out of bed?"

It's not the question it sounds like, concern masked beneath a layer of feigned disgruntlement. It's in the eyes. _Are you okay?_

River rolls onto her front and props her chin on her hands. "Beds are for the night-time, my love, and we're somewhere where the nights are nearly a quarter of a century long." _I'm okay._

He doesn't quite smirk, but there's something awfully smug in his gaze. "Is that your subtle way of telling me you want me to come back to bed?"

"Do you always ask this many questions?"

To her delight, his answer is not of the verbal variety.

 **Fin**


End file.
